short fiction

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ByLiu Cixin

a white mask with the words apex magazine on it.

Mountain

“Today is the day I’m finally going to get you to tell me what is up with you never going on land,” the Captain declared, arching an eyebrow.

ByMarian Womack

Behind that door evil lived. It was the same door, there was no doubt about it; Lawrence recognised the patterns on the wood and the little notches and ridges. The snow poured madly over its surface, pushing with all its force.

ByIsabel Yap

Find Me

Roger came back in the middle of Christmas break, when Chas had two essays due and a soon-to-be-full house to deal with, and was struggling not to sleep more than ten hours every day. Tito Rick and the twins arrived from New Jersey that morning.

ByKuzhali Manickavel

a painting of a naked man holding a sword.

Six Things We Found During the Autopsy

A Playboy was hidden behind her jaw, rolled and bent like she had stashed it there in a hurry. Black and white alarm clocks were pasted over the women’s breasts and the words !wUt aLarming bOobeez! were scrawled across the stomachs. It was hard to tell if she had done this herself or if someone else had done it for her.

ByTade Thompson

Child, Funeral, Thief, Death

Being a sensitive is difficult to explain. There is no omen at birth, no weather phenomenon, no annunciation to herald my arrival. I am a normal child by all accounts, with five fingers and toes, nappy rash, and cradle cap.

ByDamien Angelica Walters

a close up of a sign on the side of a building.

Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys: The Elephant’s Tale

Every circus has a story, and every story has its secrets. Those of us taxed with bearing the burden of such things do so with no sense of pleasure, only duty. We remember so that others, in time, may forget.

BySunny Moraine

It Is Healing, It Is Never Whole

When the souls of the suicides come tumbling out of the low, gray clouds, it’s given to us to collect them, catalog them, contain them, and load them onto the train. None of us know where the train goes—it’s the general consensus, to the extent that there is one, that it would serve no purpose for us to know, and anyway it’s not our job.

ByAlexis A. Hunter

Coming Undone

Entry #070-698 I was born incomplete, unfinished. My right leg ends in a stubby knee. The corresponding arm never developed past the shoulder.

ByMehitobel Wilson

Brisé

You are in the kitchen. You are staring at the coffeepot, at your reflection in the glass carafe, much as you stared yesterday at the door of the microwave, and the dark night before when you fixated on the patio door.